A Story of Love, Loss & Justice by Mike Bruno

This is a story of love. A love between a man and a woman. A love that endures and even strengthens despite unimaginable challenges. A love that inspires us all.

Jim and Kayla grew up in Northeast Ohio. Their mothers worked together, and they started dating at 14. They stayed close during their college years in Northwest Ohio. They married after graduation, started their careers, and planned a wonderful future together.

The couple learned in 2021 that their first child would be a girl. She arrived on December 8th, a little earlier than expected, requiring a couple of weeks in the NICU.

Upon discharge from the hospital, their baby did well. She was gaining weight, and her pediatrician was pleased with her development. After she was home for a month, things took a turn for the worse. She became lethargic. Her appetite decreased, and shortly thereafter came vomiting and diarrhea.

Jim and Kayla took the baby to the pediatrician. Because she was losing weight, the doctor recommended a hospital admission. On January 28th,  the child was admitted to a local children’s hospital to manage her dehydration from intractable diarrhea. She spent the next 14 days at that hospital with Jim and Kayla, or both, at bedside, while doctors and nurses struggled to provide nourishment and maintain her inputs and outputs.

Kayla described the situation as follows: “It was really challenging because we didn’t know what was going on. But we also had so much faith in the doctors that they were going to do what needed to be done… Things kept getting worse and worse, and she ran out of places to have an IV. And we felt really uncomfortable about her dehydration. And the doctors were very, very adamant that they were doing all they could for her, and that reassured us.

I remember waking up… looking at her, and saying, “This isn’t right; something is wrong.” And so I called the doctors, and they came in, and they did an assessment of her, and they said, oh, something’s not right; we need to get her to the PICU…”

Kayla and Jim were experiencing every parent’s worst nightmare. Their sick child was getting worse. The baby then suffered cardiac arrest, a stroke, and developed a blood clot in her lower left leg. She was transferred to a children’s hospital in Columbus. At that time, she weighed slightly over 4 lbs.

While in Columbus, her leg worsened. Kayla observed: “They told us pretty quickly that there wasn’t much hope of doing surgery to remove the clot, so we were probably watching her foot die for about a month. Honestly, it was quite a long time. It was to the point where the nurses were, like, hey, her toes might turn black and fall off. Just be aware that might happen.”

Even once it became clear that the doctors couldn’t save the leg, there were still agonizing delays, Jim recalls: “So we just kind of had to sit there and watch every day… More tissue died and the discoloration spread until they found a hard, fast line where there was still healthy tissue. And that gave them an idea where they would amputate. It was hard to watch.

We both did some pretty extensive trauma counseling after the cardiac arrest and the leg amputation.” It was about that time that Jim and Kayla were referred to Boyk Law.
Upon hearing their concerns and compelling story, we agreed to take the case. We first ordered the full hospital records. Following that, we retained a prominent critical care pediatric expert with 35 years of experience to review the records.

After doing so, our expert concluded that the hospital doctors failed to provide the child with treatment that met the accepted standards of medical care. Further, our experts concluded that had the child been treated properly, she would not have suffered cardiac arrest, stroke, or amputation of her lower left leg.

Next up – filing the malpractice lawsuit. The hospital and its doctors fought the case. They brought in prominent doctors who countered our experts and their conclusions. They took more than 15 depositions, including two in California and one in North Carolina. The court case took over 3 years. We also needed additional experts, including a pediatric life care planner, a vocational expert, and a Johns Hopkins professor of pediatric neurology.

Medical malpractice cases are among the most challenging legal matters. Such cases proceed to trial much more often than other civil cases. They are emotionally draining, and the doctors tend to take matters personally.

After discussing the case with Jim and Kayla, we next focused on settlement. To that end, we hired Ohio’s number one mediator to assist. We had Greg Tye, our firm’s AV specialist, create a moving video of the child and her family interacting, which we used to depict her limitations effectively. These efforts brought the case to an end. The case was settled for a confidential amount.

As Maya Angelou famously stated: “Love recognizes no barrier. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”